12.19.2016 Daily Links

http://21stcenturywire.com/2016/12/16/reports-at-least-10-nato-military-officers-captured-by-syrian-special-forces-this-morning-in-east-aleppo-bunker/
For scrappy scribes and stalwart citizens who refuse to kowtow to the established ‘party line’ of imperial capital as regards Syria, actual journalism–i.e., facts and sources instead of assertions and speculation–about some of the consequences of ‘insurgent’ Aleppo’s collapse, in particular the naming of personnel whom Syrian special forces have apprehended whose identifiable allegiances and background indicate North Atlantic Treaty Organization and U.S. military and intelligence ties, reports that in turn illuminate the just in live-streaming (V) of RT about an Islamic State infiltrator of Turkish police who has shot and killed the Russian ambassador at a cultural event, an incident about which New York Timesbriefings also provide data and background.

This Day in History

Half a decade more than eighteen centuries ago, Publius Septimius Geta foretold Machiavelli, when with at least some collusion from his family, he faced assassins, having left his bodyguard behind; a half decade shy of fourteen centuries forward in spacetime, in 1606, the three oceangoing vessels that inaugurated England’s presence and profit and plunder in North America disgorged their inhabitants and cargo to establish the outpost of empire at Jamestown; precisely sixty-nine years later, in 1675, to the North in New England, the soldiers of said plunder, and defenders of their new homes in their new land, managed to slaughter enough of the previous inhabitants to win the conflict at the Great Swamp Fight; a hundred one years past that bloody passage, in 1776, another upshot of that epic looting and imperial imprimatur, the sublime genius of Thomas Paine, expressed itself in the publication of the first essays that would serially delineate The American Crisis; MORE HERE

A Thought for the Day

As often as not – or more likely much more frequently than otherwise – all of the relatively minor conundrums and difficulties that occur in our lives, as well as a substantial proportion or even a majority of the more dire straits through which we must sail, emanate from patterns of psychic distress that we embrace like they were our mother’s breasts, a phenomenology of error that attaining aplomb and manifesting anything even vaguely akin to a good life requires us to notice and deconstruct with assiduous alacrity.

Quote of the Day

“To argue with a man who has renounced the use and authority of reason, and whose philosophy consists in holding humanity in contempt, is like administering medicine to the dead, or endeavoring to convert an atheist by scripture.”
― Thomas Paine, The American Crisis

Doc of the Day

The following conclusions were made by the writer – as the first visitor to inspect the ruins – after an exhaustive, though still incomplete study of this wasteland of war. Nagasaki is an island roughly resembling Manhattan in size and shape, running in north and south direction with ocean inlets on both sides, what would be the New Jersey and Manhattan sides of the Hudson river are lined with huge-war plants owned by the Mitsubishi and Kawanami families. The Kawanami shipbuilding plants, employing about 20,000 workmen, lie on both sides of the harbor mouth on what corresponds to battery park and Ellis island. That is about five miles from the epicenter of the explosion.

turkey OR levant OR ottoman russia OR crimea OR "eastern europe" OR balkans "world history" OR geopolitics OR "human history" important OR crucial OR central OR instrumental OR essential conflict OR war OR dispute OR plot strategy OR plans OR machination origins OR evolution OR development analysis OR interpretation radical OR marxist = 1,660,000 Links

From The Free Thought Project, an embedded RT video that provides readers and viewers a chance to ponder the thinking of Libertarian and often reactionary political leader Ron Paul on the ongoing ‘Russian-Hacking’ imbroglio, practical electoral insights from a veteran infighter in that realm, ideas moreover that rebut definitively the potential veracity of assertions that ‘Russia stole the election for Trump’ or other crazy nonsense that erstwhile ‘democrats’ and actual Democrats are advancing as explanations for their disastrous performance on November eighth last month, a profferal from one who is hardly a ‘progressive ally’ that scrappy scribes and stalwart citizens should nevertheless attend and examine closely.

EVENTS

SWEDEN RESIDENCYhttps://balticwritingresidency.submittable.com/submit
The Baltic Writing Residency is currently accepting applications for the a month-long residency in Stockholm, Sweden. The deadline of December 15th has been extended to January 15th. Applications can be sent via submittable. The BWR provides $1,000, and a cottage in Stockholm for one poet, playwright, or writer of fiction working in English. Though, neither the writer nor their project need be connected with Sweden. The deadline for the BWR chapbook contest is February 15.

OPPS/SUBS/CONTESTS

Authors of a book published in 2016 that “contribute to our understanding of racism and our appreciation of cultural diversity” are eligible to enter the contest for a $10,000 prize. To learn more, read this page.

Seeking blogger with a mental health/drug treatment background. Looking for long-format blog posts (1,000 – 2,000 words) with 5-6 headings, 15-20 outbound links to authority sites. Candidate must be able to learn about the client and their culture and approach and then write in a specific tone to replicate the client’s approach to mental health treatment. Need content written from the “prevention” standpoint.

A Naked Capitalism look at how the current witch hunt affects honourable members of alternative media: “Some readers have said that our concern over being smeared as an evil Rooskie propagandist and/or a purveyor of dodgy news was overdone. Yet as we showed yesterday, via our attorney Jim Moody’s second letter to the Washington Post, the purge has already started. Counterpunch was dropped from Google News the day after the Post legitimated the propaganda site PropOrNot’s false accusation that Counterpunch was a Putin stooge. Even though Counterpunch sought reinstatement and got itself removed from PropOrNot’s blacklist, Google has refused to reinstate them and has not given any explanation as to why.”

A Times Literary Supplement look at the importantly influential, if not widely distributed, writers who reshaped culture: “It is easy enough to list the small group of well-known, foundational authors; but we must also take note of those lesser known writers – most enslaved at one point; a few born free – whose names and works deserve to be commemorated. Many of these published works were the memoirs of the formerly enslaved; but volumes of poetry and some fiction, along with a vigorous collection of essays and reportage, completed the array of black writing published before the end of the Civil War.”

A Strategic Culture look at America’s ‘fake news’ claims and what these really mean in the context of the constant misinformation and propaganda that monopoly media regurgitates time and time again: “The US corporate media, its strings pulled by the modern version of the Central Intelligence Agency’s old Operation MOCKINGBIRD media influencing operation, is laughably accusing Russia of generating «fake news» to influence the outcome of the American presidential election. In a November 24, 2016, article in the CIA-connected Washington Post, reporter Craig Timberg reported: «Russia’s increasingly sophisticated propaganda machinery — including thousands of botnets, teams of paid human ‘trolls,’ and networks of websites and social-media accounts — echoed and amplified right-wing sites across the Internet as they portrayed Clinton as a criminal hiding potentially fatal health problems and preparing to hand control of the nation to a shadowy cabal of global financiers». The Post’s article is worthy of the CIA-generated propaganda spun by the paper at the height of the Cold War-era MOCKINGBIRD.”

A sombre post from World Socialist Web Site for all those who care about not just women’s rights but also avoiding the complete immiseration of the population as a whole, a piece of use to any scrappy scribe: “The group’s president, Michael Gonidakis, bluntly explained the law’s intention to the Columbus Dispatch, saying, “The 20-week ban was nationally designed to be the vehicle to end abortion in America. It challenges the current national abortion standard and properly moves the legal needle from viability [the legal standard under Roe v. Wade ] to the baby’s ability to feel pain.” (emphasis added)”

A Blacklisted News look at Americans pursuing the psychopathic projection tactic onto their foreign relations in regards to the accusation of rigging elections: “Twenty years ago, TIME Magazine exclusively reported on the feats of American political consultants who’d managed — much to the joy of the United States government — to ensure Boris Yeltsin won re-election to the Russian presidency. Titled Rescuing Boris, TIME’s article bore a subtitle eerily similar to accusations flooding headlines two decades later — for altogether different but parallel reasons — “THE SECRET STORY OF HOW FOUR U.S. ADVISERS USED POLLS, FOCUS GROUPS, NEGATIVE ADS AND ALL THE OTHER TECHNIQUES OF AMERICAN CAMPAIGNING TO HELP BORIS YELTSIN WIN.”“